No matter where the number eventually ends up in this country–50,000? 200,000? 1 million?–a lot of people are going to die from the Coronavirus, and I can’t help wondering what affect that will have on US culture.
During my lifetime, I’ve seen Americans get a lot less comfortable with the concept of death. We don’t like to talk about it. We don’t like to think about it. Even the word death makes us uncomfortable. We talk about someone passing. They passed away. They passed. At the time of their passing. When she finally passes. You get the idea. Last year, I noticed that it was jarring to hear someone actually say someone died. The word death had become impolite, almost somehow transgressive.
I can imagine all sorts of reasons for this. Previous US generations had a relationship with death that was, shall we say, more up close and personal. If there was a war, it affected everybody. If there was a disease, it affected everybody. Many families raised their own food, slaughtered their own meat. Killing animals for sport is cruel, but killing them for food makes one–or it should anyway–think about where they stand on the food chain.
When I had a job transcribing the dictated notes of financial advisors and insurance agents, I heard more than one person talk about their clients dying–excuse me, passing–in terms of “if and when.” It always made me laugh. Ain’t no if about it, motherfucker. They’re definitely passing. They’re going to be well and truly passed. Passed as a doornail. You heard the old joke about the graveyard? People are just passing to get in.
I guess I’m saying that the American response to death–don’t want to talk about it and I’m hoping Jesus has got that all sorted out for me–hasn’t struck me as incredibly healthy. You don’t try to pile up massive amounts of stuff, ever-increasing amounts of money & assets, constantly trading your wife in for a younger, shinier model, because you’ve accepted the fact of your death. You don’t schedule regular visits for cosmetic surgery, implant this, color that, and spend all that money trying to preserve the illusion of youth either. This country has been so afraid of death that it’s spent most of its energy and resources into preserving the illusion that it won’t happen. And in so doing, they’ve made a mess of the goddamn world.
When Arthur Lee was 22, he was the leader of a band called Love who were making their third album. The result, 1967’s Forever Changes, is one of those albums that is so good it feels almost like an insult to call it music. While he was writing and recording the album, Lee was convinced he was about to die, and the album is soaked in all kinds of introspective metaphysical speculation about what it means to live and die. And as a guide to one’s own existence amidst an impending sense of doom, it’s up there with Book of Revelation and Eastern mysticism.
Arthur ended up living for another 40 years, but his band died the year after Forever Changes came out–along with a senseless number of Americans and Vietnamese. He continued to record under the name Love, but never got within artistic shouting distance of Forever Changes. But if most of our lives are, as Oscar Wilde once said, “a bad quarter of an hour made up of exquisite moments,” this is one of the most exquisite of Arthur’s.
I can only speak for myself here, but I’ve found nothing in my life more liberating than the acceptance of my own death. Not because I think I’ve got another life after this one, but because the temporal nature of my own existence gives it a kind of intense beauty that wouldn’t otherwise exist. If life is a gift, then our death is how we repay that gift. It’s how we give back to the animals that gave us life. It’s how we get out of the way in order to allow the younger generations space to live. And while I’m not a believer in progress as a straight line, I’m definitely a believer in evolution–imagine trying to type this with no thumbs–and the role I’ve been given to play in this species is to do my bit and then move on. If there was no death, this would be an extremely crowded planet, filled with cro-magnons attending Harvard because their great-grandfather to the 137th power had gone there.
Or something. I guess what I’m trying to say is our nation’s obsession with somehow trying to cheat death is one of the many contributing factors to what makes our nation–how can I put this politely?–fucking insane. And maybe this virus will help some people accept that death isn’t something to be afraid of, and that life is something to be valued. Not just your death, but the death of others. And not just your life, but the life of others. To be truly alive is to celebrate as you mourn, to laugh as you struggle, and to weep in your moments of victory.
Scott Creney 